Owara Kaze no Bon

Owara Kaze no Bon is unlike the boisterous summer festivals of Japan. In the old silk town of Yatsuo, on the slopes above Toyama, the first three days of September are given to a dance of almost unnerving restraint. Dancers in straw hats pulled low over their faces move in slow, exact lines along the stone-paved streets, the women's hands tracing the gestures of planting and harvest, to the melancholy sound of the kokyu, a bowed fiddle, and unaccompanied song. It is a prayer for the rice harvest to be spared the typhoon winds, hence "the Bon of the wind".

Each of the eleven neighbourhoods of Etchu-Yatsuo has its own troupe and its own stretch of street. Performances on small stages take place in the evening, but the heart of the festival is the machinagashi, the street dances that begin at dusk and drift through the town with no fixed timetable. The crowds, which are considerable for so small a town, begin to thin after 21:00, and the last hour, when the dancers pass under the bombori lanterns of the Suwa-machi slope with only a scatter of onlookers, is what people return for.

Yatsuo is reached by the JR Takayama Line from Toyama, with special services during the festival, and the old town is a steep walk uphill from the station. Accommodation in Yatsuo itself is almost nonexistent, so most visitors stay in Toyama and take the last train back. Expect quiet, some rain, and the need to be patient; the dancers stop when it rains and there is no announcement of where they will next appear.